


Forever

by mayrwyn



Category: Highlander: The Series, The Walking Dead (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayrwyn/pseuds/mayrwyn
Summary: Summary: Daryl and Carol met at the end of the world. Then the world didn’t completely end and they just became two people who didn’t particularly want to kill each other. Now here they are at the End of the World again, and the world really seems to mean it this time. Suddenly everything just feels different. (This is a Highlander Fusion fic. No characters from that franchise are present in this story. While there are a few references, they exist as tiny treats for those who recognize them, and are not integral to the plot.)





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 

The first time he met her the whole world was dying. He was somewhere in France in the summer of 1944. Daryl died three times during the second World War, but the last time someone noticed. He revived alone, leaning against a tree, with an immortal nearby and no sword to defend himself. His dog tags were gone, so if his death wasn’t already reported it would be soon. His unit was long gone and had taken everything useful with them, leaving him with no means to protect himself.

He pushed himself to his feet in a rush, scanning the area for anything at all that he could use as a weapon. The Immortal he felt wasn’t trying to hide. A few yards away from him, was a slight woman of indeterminate age with a cap of silver hair and unlined, bright blue eyes. She was surrounded by a troupe of young children. Everyone (including him, to be fair) was a bit too skinny and covered with dirt.

“I’m Carole Marie de Valicourt,” she said, “and if you want to fight someone to the death, I can point you in the direction of some Nazis.” There was nothing hesitant about her English, and she had only the faintest trace of an accent when she spoke. The setting sun behind her made it hard to look directly at her without blinking, but the lack of anything sharp and pointy was a bit of a comfort.

“Think I already did that,” he said, shrugging. “Take a minute before I’m ready for another go.”

“Nothing like that Immortal refractory period,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at him. Daryl could feel the heat crawling up his neck long before she noticed it and smirked.

“They’s kids here,” he said.

 “They don’t understand us unless we speak French.” She shook her head and gestured at him to walk in front of her. “I’m not going to let you walk behind me just because I think you’re cute. Head east.”

They were Immortal, and Immortals killed each other. But the world was burning down around them, they were on the same side, and there were little people to protect and armies to hide from.

Her eyes were the color of cornflowers.

Days and nights blurred together in a rush of survival until he didn’t have a clue how much time had passed before it was time to make a choice. If she weren’t going to try to cut his head off one day, he would have stayed in France. But he wasn’t stupid (he was very young and very stupid) and he knew that the only Immortal he could ever be safe from was Merle, and then only until The Gathering made killing a compulsion. He left, but he dreamed he’d asked her to come with him for a good five years.

 

 

 

The second time he saw her, he was in a club in Atlanta in 1975. He was taking a drink of a mediocre beer and nearly choked to death when the presence washed over him, but he still found her first. She stood just inside the entrance, her eyes wide and searching the crowd, and he smirked at her when she finally spotted him. Merle would have boxed his ears for not starting out with the idea that she had changed in the thirty years since France, but it was Carole and something about her just wouldn’t let him entertain those kinds of thoughts.

It could have been incredibly stupid.

Which was probably why she greeted him by rolling her eyes and shouting over the band, “You’re smiling at me like you saw me yesterday. I could be here to challenge you.”

He held out his own beer until she took it, waved down the bartender for another, then said, “Well, if you’re gonna kill me, at least have a drink first.” He was trying to sound nonchalant, but he could feel the heat of his embarrassment creeping up his neck and across his face.

They ended up leaving the club to share a bottle of wine in her hotel room. Friday night drinks turned into Saturday morning coffee and that turned into staying in the city for two weeks, meeting up to hang out at bars and restaurants and the occasional film, until some jackass cornered them in an alley.

It was a long, hard fight, but after he won and everything got quiet, she was staring at him with an odd expression.

“This was a terrible place for a challenge. Can you run?” she asked.

 “I got this. Get the hell out of here.”

“You’re covered in blood and dead on your feet,” she countered, frowning.

“I said I got this, get out of here. This weren’t about you.”

She nodded. “See you around, Dixon.”

Later, when he went by her hotel and discovered she had left not just the alley but the city, he cursed a blue streak. He told himself it was just a misunderstanding and that if he started at the airport and then checked the bus stations, he might have a chance at catching up to her.

He was halfway to the elevator when he stopped. It was just as well, wasn’t it? Who knew if somebody saw enough to connect a guy that looked like him to a headless body in an alley? No, better to take off. Hit the woods for a while. Wait and see what, if anything, came of tonight’s little adventure. Then he would see if he could find her. He knew enough about her present identity to make a good start. Yeah, best to wait a bit first. If she was away clear, he didn’t want to find her when he might be dragging trouble along with him.

And he did look later, but when Carole disappeared, she did it without a trace.

 

 

 

The third time he saw her was at the beer concession in Savannah at an REO Speedwagon concert. It was 1987, and this time she saw him first. He was scanning the crowd, frustrated by his inability to find where the sensation of another Immortal was coming from, when she seemed to appear out of nowhere with two beers, biting her bottom lip.

“I swear, you take advantage of my hands being full to try to kill me, you better hang around to make sure they put ‘died of being a sentimental idiot’ on my tombstone.”

His breathing hitched and his heart stopped and started back up again, so sudden and strong that it made his stomach turn funny. He had to swallow twice before he could say anything, and he could see her weight shift in preparation for flight when the pause got long.

“You’re okay. I couldn’t find you. Damn, I thought something bad happened.” he said. He sounded far too relieved and excited to his own ears, like some kid meeting their celebrity idol.

She laughed. “Well, the beer line is long, but not that long!” The look she gave him was significant, and he felt the damn blush start back up.

He wanted to tell her that he absolutely didn’t blush all the time, that she was the only person on the planet with the gift for making him do that, but she wouldn’t believe him, anyway. Or she would, and that would be worse, because he knew it took a real moron to expose all their weaknesses to somebody who might be on the other side of a challenge someday.

Even the briefest acknowledgement that she was a future opponent gave him a strange, panicky feeling.

So he ignored it.

“Are we staying for the show, or getting out of here and going where it’s less noisy to indulge in hours of gossip?” She was looking up at him, grinning so hard her nose wrinkled and her eyes turned to slits, confident that whatever else he had going on would be dropped in favor of her company.

She wasn’t wrong.

“Don’t gossip,” he grumbled. “But I seen ‘em already if you want some cheaper beer.”

“Deal.”

Daryl was living in his truck and bumming around, taking on small jobs here and there in the manner to which he had become accustomed decades ago. But Carole had an artsy little apartment that had been renovated to be mostly kitchen.

Carole had dropped the “e” from the end of her first name and only spoke English. Her last name in Savannah was Dubois, and she taught in a kindergarten. She laughed when she admitted to making her identity come from rich parents, so she didn’t have to try to live like she taught kindergarten.

Daryl decided on the spot that he had been planning to stay in the city for a while and was looking for a job that wasn’t his usual construction. He told her that as if the idea weren’t milliseconds old.

“You should teach. You’re good with kids.”

He blinked at her, suddenly and sharply reminded of those weeks in France with a handful of orphans. “Can’t even —”

“Don’t—,” she snapped, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Daryl, no one could have done any better.”

He wanted to ask if she’d finished raising those kids, if they’d all lived together until they grew up and left her behind, but he couldn’t make himself. That war was over decades ago, after all.

“Well, ain’t got the papers for it.”

She tilted her head, considering. “I know it’s an intrusive question, but couldn’t you create a new identity?”

He laughed. “Ain’t had nothin’ but a string of bad fake driver’s licenses since the real me died.” He stopped himself before he said, ‘in the war’, because they were carefully moving away from that subject.

“Oh! Well, if you want, I could help you with that.”

“Ask me again tomorrow. That’s business, and I want to know where you went after Atlanta. Looked all over the damned place for you.”

“France,” she said.

Oh. Well. Of course, she went to France. France was home for her, wasn’t it? “Well, shit.”

She smirked, “By all over, you mean all over Georgia?”

“Shut up.”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.”

She offered him a couch for the night, and it struck him that for two people who were supposed to kill each other, they’d never had trouble sleeping in the room together. He accepted, waited for trepidation that never came, and the night turned into the weekend. The weekend turned into the week. He moved from the couch to the bed, and the week turned into a month.

Then she decided they should get him those new papers, and they spent a whole night deciding how old he was.

“I can’t pass for twenty-five.”

“Sure you can. There are some rough living men in their twenties out there who look older than you, and you want these to last you a while. If you’re twenty-five now, you could probably stretch it twenty-five or thirty years on these documents with some strategic facial hair and creative hair dye.” That explained her current jet-black riot of curls. It also made him feel a little like an ass for missing the silver.

“Ain’t nobody in their right mind gonna look at me and see a twenty-five-year-old graduate student. This is a thirty-five-year-old biker face, ma chèrie.”

“How old were you really when you died the first time?”

He couldn’t tell if she hadn’t heard his slip or if she was ignoring it, but he didn’t really care as long as they didn’t have to talk about it. “Dunno, really. Merle got me out the orphanage in 1912, when I was probably around six or seven. Died in ’33. So somewhere just shy of thirty, I guess. Was about to starve to death, so he bashed my head in with a rock to make sure the immortality shit kicked in.”

She was looking at him with one eyebrow raised. “So, you were somewhere under thirty in 1933 when you stopped aging, but you don’t think you can pass for it?”

“Pfffft. People put age on a lot faster back then. Especially poor people. Just make me thirty-five. And we both know that’s pushin’ it a bit.”

She sighed, but nodded and instead of arguing said, “I didn’t know you were raised by your Teacher.”

Daryl shrugged. “Merle? Yeah. Well, much as anybody did, anyway. Make sure he’s in there, too. Big brother.”

“Not your father?”

“He ain’t never looked old enough for that. Not since I was a little kid. Never wanted the title, anyway. We been brothers from the start.” It was about then that he realized just how much he’d told her.

“I was, too,” she said, smiling softly. “Raised by my first Teacher, I mean. I don’t remember anything before my parents adopted me, but they were both immortal. I never thought I would be. Because they made me train, but they were always saying it was because of what they were. And then they sent me off to another teacher after – well, after. Said it was best, and I suppose it turned out to be that. I count them both as my first Teachers, though, because I was pretty much raised like I was going to be an immortal even if I didn’t recognize it at the time.”

Daryl blinked. “Y’ain’t gotta lie just ‘cause I ran my mouth. Can just say you ain’t dumb enough to tell me your whole life story.”

She was shaking her head and looking angry. “I’m not a liar, Daryl Dixon. Well, I’ve never lied to you. Just because some twisted asshole convinced you that no two immortals in the history of the world have ever been more than occasional acquaintances doesn’t make it true. My parents have been married for almost three hundred years.

“Immortals all kill each other.”

“Where have I heard that before? Let’s just change the subject.”

But he couldn’t. “Naw. Can’t do that. You talk about the Game all the time. Never said a word when that Challenge went down in Atlanta except it was a stupid place to have one. Can’t stand there now sayin’ we don’t kill each other!”

“You and I don’t kill each other.”

“That’s different! And you gonna try one day.”

“Are you?”

“Hell, no.” He meant the words. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known since nearly the beginning that he didn’t want to kill her. But he’d only ever wanted to kill one or two immortals, and he’d taken significantly more heads than that. But saying it, out loud, shook him down to his bones.

She could kill him whenever she wanted, because he didn’t want to kill her.

“But you won’t believe me when I say I won’t,” she said softly.

“Not today,” he choked out. “Believe you won’t today.”

She nodded, but the rest of the afternoon was an oddly uncomfortable silence, when all their silences had been comfortable before.

That night, there were blankets and a pillow back on the couch.

Three days later she gave him an envelope with a shiny new identity in it and he thought maybe they were on their way to making up, but she kept insisting it wasn’t a fight that they were having. That they just needed a little space for them both to think, but not so much space that he should.

It might have all settled out eventually, had it not been for Merle.

Merle was put in jail—again—and Daryl had to drive up to Atlanta to fix his mess before he outed immortals to the whole world. Carol hugged him a little too tight as he was leaving.

“If I don’t hear from you by next week I’m going to move on,” she whispered.

“Be back by the weekend. Gonna break him outta whatever morgue they put him in when he suicides, make sure he’s got a vehicle and some pocket money, then give him time to get a little distance before I come back. Know you ain’t gonna wanna meet him.” The truth was, Daryl didn’t ever want Merle to meet Carol. Merle liked taking a Quickening a bit too much for Daryl to be comfortable with them being in the same city. Or the same state, even.

But Merle wasn’t as easy to shake as Daryl thought he would be. Two weeks after they left, Daryl snuck out of their motel room to the pay phone on the corner. It was his intention to promise again that it wouldn’t be much longer, but when he dialed her number the phone had been disconnected.

 

 

 

 

The fourth time he met her, the world was ending.

He didn’t think that anything would ever be stronger than the relief he felt at that first wash of presence. Daryl had been feeling an ever-increasing desire to pull a sword on Merle. It was so strong that a tiny voice in the back of his head was whispering that The Gathering was here, after all, and that their meandering was really a pull to a place where all of them that were left would decide who got to live forever in the hell the world was turning into.

But the presence was only presence, so it wasn’t The Gathering at all.

Merle was just an annoying asshole when he was high, and Daryl couldn’t remember a day in the last ten years that Merle wasn’t high for at least part of. He was utterly and deeply exhausted by Merle before there were dead people trying to eat them. He wanted to shake hands, slap each other on the back, and plan where to meet up next month. Instead, he was babysitting his addicted Teacher while the older man tried his best to turn every other person on the planet into an enemy. As if they didn’t have enough enemies already. Still, there were two of them and Merle was the toughest fighter Daryl had ever seen even when he was high as a kite, so the presence was a relief instead of really feeling like a threat. He didn’t pay much attention to it, except for the relief that it didn’t inspire any more desire to fight than normal.

Then Merle made a scoffing sound and said, “That ain’t even a snack. You can have it, brother, don’t think there’s enough there to be worth the trouble of takin’ it. Might not even know what the hell she is yet.”

“Shut up, Merle,” Daryl said, but the distraction was gone, and he turned his attention to seeking out the source of the sensation. Actually, once he paid attention, it had a familiar sort of harmony to it. Pleasant where Presence was always discordant. His eyes widened in comprehension and he tamped down on the excitement he couldn’t let Merle see.

Then he saw her, and his breath caught.

Joy, fear, anticipation, excitement, and a strange protectiveness rushed through him, chased by surprise at his own reaction. He only just stopped himself from stepping between Merle and the last woman he expected to see in a quarry in Western Georgia.

Carol was hovering behind some big mortal with a cigarette dangling out of the side of his mouth. Her eyes slid over them and away, settling on the man approaching them. Daryl knew that meant he should be watching the man Merle was talking to, but instead he tuned out everything in the camp except for her. Her hair was shorter than he had ever seen it, and she seemed smaller than he remembered, somehow. It took a minute for him to realize that she only looked smaller because her shoulders curled forward and her head was down. Her hands were fidgeting, picking at a sleeve, then at the hem of her shirt, then fluttering over the shoulders of the child leaning beside her. Her eyes tracked the big man in front of her like prey tracking a predator. It wasn’t even the alert watchfulness of the first time they met, strangers who were meant to kill each other. It was more hesitant than that. Quick, darting looks meant to not seem like she was watching at all.

It bothered Daryl, the way she was looking at the guy.

They were going to rob the lot of them. That was the plan. Merle wanted what they had, and Daryl wanted to shut Merle up. It was easier to just follow along and save the fighting for things that mattered. Honestly, Daryl hadn’t been able to tell what mattered for a while now, beyond making sure Merle didn’t get them both killed. Making sure Merle didn’t get them both killed was a full-time job. It was only a little better since the world ended.

His brother was hooked on all kinds of shit that Daryl hadn’t thought an immortal could get hooked on, and he had a taste for Quickenings as well. That didn’t matter, though. He owed Merle his life so many times over he couldn’t even count them, so he would take this time to take care of the other man whether the world decided to end itself or not.

But here was Carol, with a kid at her hip and a man in her tent.

Carol wasn’t supposed to have a man in her tent.

Not that there was a reason she couldn’t. He hadn’t seen the woman in more than twenty years. And it was just a mortal, anyway. She was too smart to really start something up with an Immortal. Savannah had been an aberration. A weird time in a strange place. They were both lucky Merle’s penchant for dumbassery saved them from themselves.

The point was, they were only old acquaintances. Maybe sort of friends, at least until one of them challenged the other. It wasn’t his business whether she was sharing her tent with some pig-faced brute of a mortal. There was something about the way that she was holding herself that was unfamiliar and vaguely disturbing.

She was still angry with him, he could tell by the way she was pretending she’d never seen him before in her life. Later, away from prying eyes, they could say their apologies and just get on with it. But dammit, now he had to find a way to convince Merle not to rob the camp. No way Daryl was taking supplies from a group of survivors that had Carol’s family in it.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

 

The first night, the sounds from Carol’s tent made it clear why she was keeping an eye on the man she was with.

“Guess we know how that one bought it,” Merle said, sounding disgusted.

“Leave her alone, Merle. You done give that one to me.” He tried to sound casual.

“You ain’t Teacher material. Too sweet. You gotta be able to knock your student on they ass when they need it. Besides, girls don’t last long no ways, little brother. Just break your heart to try to teach one o’ them. Best let that situation play out how it’s gonna, unless you’re talkin’ about having her for a snack. Ain’t got no fight in her, so you might be able to win.”

“I win plenty. Still here, ain’t I? Just sayin’, whatever I do or I don’t, it’s up to me. You done give me that.”

Merle held both hands up in front of him and smirked. “Sure, sure. What you plannin’?”

“Right now, planning to sleep, then hunt, then see what these people can do with some fresh meat. I sure ain’t hunting and cooking both.”

Deflection and omission were old friends at this point. Daryl learned early on that Merle could smell a lie a mile away. The fact that his brother didn’t catch on to the turn in the conversation and continue digging for information just proved the Merle had gotten into his stash sometime between setting up the tent and bedding down for the night. Daryl was glad of it this time, though. A sober Merle was damned perceptive.

It didn’t escape his notice that keeping the two of them apart felt more important even than getting to talk to Carol. It had been a long time since Savannah, and Daryl couldn’t stop thinking about it long enough to fall asleep. He stared at the zipper keeping the tent flap closed long after the sounds from her family’s tent faded. He wanted to go across the intervening space and slit the man’s throat, then yell at her for letting him do those things to her. She stood up to Nazis, for crying out loud. She died her first death being tortured for information that they never got from her. She collected war orphans, kept them fed, mostly warm, and completely loved. She was Carole Marie de Valicourt, Resistance badass extraordinaire, world traveler, Nazi hunter, and kindergarten teacher. She was glorious and could kill that smelly, fat – it just didn’t make sense. He’d seen her fight. He’d even sparred with her a time or two. Nothing bladed, just hands and feet, but he knew that she could stop this if she wanted.

If she wanted.

She hadn’t looked like that, though, had she? She hadn’t looked like she could put a stop to anything. She’d looked —

It was his business, wasn’t it? Whatever her mortal’s name was, if the violence was habitual, then he had to have noticed the healing by now. Sure, bruises might hang around for a day or two, but anything that broke skin would be gone in seconds. A broken bone would mend in minutes. What if he killed her and she came back in front of him? What right did she have to risk exposing all of them by staying with someone like that?

That was it. It must be. It was the risk of exposure that bothered him so much. If she was putting them all in danger, well, he would have to step in, wouldn’t he?

It wasn’t even a little bit because the only word that fit after _she looked_ was _scared_.

 

 

 

He slipped out of the tent and into the woods before the sun came up.

Daryl had spent most of his life in the woods, coming out now and then because the world changed quickly and if he didn’t spend a few months in a city every three or four years he would lose the ability to blend in. Merle call his extended stays in the woods “hiding”, but that wasn’t the point. Daryl was a solitary creature by nature, and he felt more at home surrounded by trees than he did surrounded by people.

But today he just couldn’t settle. Merle was likely terrorizing the camp by now, and who knew what would happen if he came into contact with Carol. He’d promised to leave her to Daryl, but the odds of him remembering that were too close to 50/50 for Daryl’s taste. Meat was the tax they paid to be in camp, though, so he stayed until he had half a dozen squirrel and a rabbit.

Carol could do things with a rabbit, some wild greens, and a pit full of coals that made his mouth water at just the memory. He’d tried it himself a couple of times, but it never tasted like it did when she made it while they were hunkered down in a barn in the French countryside. There were different plants there, he figured. At the time, he hadn’t watched too close. Or rather, he was watching too closely for signs they’d been spotted to watch her cook. Sweat dripped into his eyes when he shook his head, the sting helping him pull himself away from the memory and back into the present.

He could tell as the camp came into view that Merle had, indeed, been working his magic. His brother was standing next to a pair of blonde women, grinning at how uncomfortable they both looked. Dammit. Daryl altered his course and shoved himself between them as he entered camp.

“Ew!” The younger squawked, twitching away from him.

“Dear God, watch where you’re going,” her sister said, wrinkling her nose.

Merle laughed. “Baby brother ain’t got no manners.”

“Stop loafin’ and take this back to our camp. I’m droppin’ off the meat.” He shoved his crossbow into Merle’s gut with only slightly more force than necessary.

“I’m conversatin’ here—”

“Plenty time for talk later. You want to eat anytime soon, you’ll carry this over there. Or you could gut and skin the meat for me?”

Merle knew the difference between a small job and a large one, and they both knew which one he would pick. They exchanged glares as Merle took the weapon and headed back toward their tent.

The little blonde squealed again when the string of squirrels brushed against her leg, and the older one glared at him.

“Excuse you.”

Daryl rolled his eyes, then very obviously looked toward his brother and said, “You’re welcome,” as he resumed his trip toward the cookfire.

Carol wasn’t alone. She had been alone, when he was approaching the clearing, but two other women joined her while Daryl was busy diverting Merle from his conquest. There was a tall, lanky woman who looked like she might have a heroine stash somewhere, all angles and disgusted looks. The other was a sharp looking woman, dark skin and intelligent eyes. She had an air of weariness about her, like she was surrounded mostly by children who thought they were the adults. They stood like bookends on either side of his target and paid far too close attention when he set the meat on the picnic table.

“Got one rabbit. Mess o’ squirrel. What you want to make tonight?” Daryl was careful to address them as a group, keeping his gaze wide enough to take them all in. It was damn hard.

Carol didn’t so much as glance at him.

“Oh, you’re going to have to skin those, honey. We are all grocery store cooks around here,” the dark one said.

Daryl nodded, then slowly started to set up to get to work, trying to unobtrusively catch Carol’s eye. She didn’t correct her companion, so that’s who she was playing. He could work with that. It was more information than he had before, anyway.

“Not here!” The heroin chic looking lady waved a hand in a circle, not indicating anywhere specific as she said, “Take those things somewhere else.”

“I’ll show you where,” Carol said, softly.

Well, hallelujah and praise be, it was about time she caught on.

“No! Carol, sweetie, you stay here. I’ll get Shane to take Mister…”

“Dixon. Daryl.”

“Shane will show Mister Dixon where he can do his work, you stay here with us.”

“Yours?” he said. He may have sounded a little pissed off.

“Excuse me?”

“Gave you my name. Now you give me yours. ‘s what _civilized_ people do.” Yeah, he sounded a little pissed off.

“Hey! Dixon!” And there was Shane, knight in shining armor, come to save the women folk from the scary hillbilly. “Come on, man, we’ll get you set up out by the tree line. Know a good spot for it.”

Daryl knew a better spot, but he let himself be led away without arguing.

So, he didn’t manage it on the first attempt. He’d get her away from the group soon. Shane was talking at him, fake affable, with lots of pats on the back and what he probably thought were meaningful looks.

“Look, we all appreciate you hunting, but it might be best if you and your brother just talked to me, man. The women are skittish, y’know?”

Daryl blew out a breath. “Ain’t nothin’ to be skittish about. Merle’s annoying, but he ain’t gonna do anything but run his mouth.”

Shane wasn’t talking about the incident between Merle and the blondes, though, and they both knew it. Daryl stared straight into the other man’s eyes, challenging him to be more specific.

“Now, I’m not accusing anybody of anything. But we’ve got all different kinds of people here, and it might be better to go slow with each other, is all. We don’t want any misunderstandings that might lead to unnecessary conflict, right? So, you guys just talk to me for a while and give everybody else a chance to get used to you.”

“Might want to worry less about the guy dropping off meat to the cooks real polite like, and more about the asshole beating the hell outta his wife. But sure, man, I’ll talk to you first.”

“Now, that’s a pretty big accusation.”

“He’s a pretty big asshole. You got ears, man? Eyes?”

“I can’t go getting’ in between a man and his wife without an invitation. I got an eye on it, though. You worry about you and yours and let me worry the camp.”

Daryl shrugged, but didn’t lower his gaze. “Your camp, man. I just hunt.”  He wasn’t just saying that, either. As far as he was concerned, there were only three people in this camp that he was concerned with. No, that wasn’t right. There were four. Carol had acquired that little girl that he kept forgetting about. She made four. Three and a half? Whatever.

Shane wanted to be in charge, and that was more than fine with Daryl.

 

 

 

 

 

A week later, Daryl wasn’t sure he remembered what sleep felt like. He’d been riding herd on Merle for years before the world turned, but the last six days and twelve hours were an exercise in torture. Merle wanted to rob the camp and go. Merle wanted him to run interference with Amy so Merle could talk to her sister alone. Merle wanted him to challenge “that damned newborn” or give up dibs on her one or the other. Merle wanted him to do all of these things yesterday, because this was taking too much time for his taste. All the while, Carol had either been avoiding him or hadn’t been able to find a way to talk to him unnoticed, and every night he heard things that felt like torture.

She should just kill the son of a bitch. Why didn’t she?

Did she even have a sword?

His thoughts ran in circles, chasing nightmare scenarios down rabbit holes, and every time he turned around Merle was either trying to touch Andrea or prod T-Dog into a brawl. And that poor Chinese kid was—well, Merle was being even more Merle than usual, and now his stash was running low.

When Daryl finally did get Carol off to the side and a few yards from camp, things got off on the wrong foot fast.

“This ain’t you,” Daryl hissed. He was walking a thin line between keeping their conversation hidden and expressing a rage he couldn’t really explain. Her life was her business and always had been. But every time he saw the faint hints of yellow and green splashed across her pale skin, he felt like he wanted to explode.

“What isn’t me?” Her arms were wrapped around her waist, and her eyes kept darting over her left shoulder in the direction of the asshole to which she had attached herself.

 “Why the hell are you hanging around that asshole?”

Carol stilled. “Why are you?”

Daryl winced. Fine, they were both hanging around assholes. But Merle was family, and Carol knew that, so it was really kind of rude to bring it up. “We’re talking’ about you, now.”

“There’s no reason for me to answer questions you already know the answers to,” she said. Her shoulders were stiff as she turned away. She was going to walk away from him.

“Sorry. Ain’t nobody seen us. Don’t go.” She hesitated, glanced at him, then swept the area one more time with her eyes before taking a step toward him.

“Her name’s Sophia.”

Well, shit. Of course. There it was.

“Yeah? Sweet lookin’ kid. That how you got tangled up? She in your class or somethin’?”

Her lips twitched, just a little. “No. I was volunteering at a hospital. Her mother died in childbirth. Ed was devastated and overwhelmed and really just kind of sweet back then.”

Daryl flinched. “You love him.”

Carol shrugged, “I had affection and sympathy for him once, there’s a difference. But Sophia? I love _her_ , Daryl. I love her, she’s his, and she’ll be with him whether I am or not.”

Much of the tension he’d been carrying around uncurled itself, and Daryl took a deep breath. He didn’t look closely at why he wanted so badly to hear that she wasn’t in love with Ed. Placing herself in danger for a child? That was Carol. The woman that moved around the camp like a meek little slip of thing, doing three jobs to everyone else’s one like she was trying to make up for the work her husband didn’t do? That woman didn’t seem like the Carol he knew. She seemed different, held herself different, looked different…but she was still Carol. His friend was still in there. She was right in front of him.

And she didn’t love Ed Peletier.

“I get it,” he said. It was only a slight exaggeration.

“I don’t need help. If I need help, I’ll tell you.”

“Last night, he –” he had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting. “I heard—”

She interrupted him. “I choose what price I’m willing to pay to be that girl’s mama. That’s my business.”

 Here are some things Daryl wanted to say: “You ain’t trapped there?”, “You ain’t there ‘cause he knows what you are and could out all of us?”, “He ain’t blackmailing you with that kid?”.

He said, “Yeah. Look out for Merle. Got him convinced I got dibs on you, but he ain’t himself.”

Carol sighed, nodded, and walked away from him, her body language changing with every step until she was back to being to be the stranger that made his skin crawl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The historical parts of this story are just as fictional as the "there are zombies" parts. We don't spend any real time in the past, but since I had them meet at a time and a place where there were actual real life heroes, I felt kind of funny not noting somewhere that this is NOT what one would dream of calling "well researched historical fiction."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

 

 

Daryl ran.

There was no other word for it, really.

Between needing to get away from the sounds that reached across the distance from Carol’s tent to take up residence in his head every night and the almost physical yearning to take a real break from Merle, something had to give. Daryl took to the woods before the thing that gave was his sanity. The excuse he used was a longer hunt, hopefully leading to larger game.

He could run from the camp. He could run from the people. But everywhere he went, his damned brain was along for the ride. When he finally found sign to follow, it was like a gift from heaven. He exhaled and with it every disturbing thought flowed out of him.  His mind became blessedly quiet.

He spent three days in the quiet, just him, his prey, the heat, and the dead.

The world came crashing back with the sound of shouts and panic, and the loss of the meat that should have given the kids full bellies for a couple of days. He’d tracked a deer, put a bolt in it, and then followed the blood back toward camp. He thought at first that his luck may finally be turning. He hadn’t particularly relished the idea of hauling the thing back, so when the blood trail turned toward the camp he’d grinned. Every step the animal took in that direction itself was one less step he would have to drag it.

When he came out and found it being a feast for a Walker instead of any of the people standing around in a circle staring at it, it may as well have been a sign of things to come.

Because everything accelerated from there.

Later, it would all get jumbled together. It made sense, really. He was starving, overheated, emotionally exhausted and suffering from sleep deprivation. And he couldn’t even turn his back for one little hunt without Merle getting himself chained to a roof for the dead to feast on. Chained there, and the scope of what that meant stretched out in front of Daryl. It felt like an accusation. Merle would die of exposure and thirst, then revive and heal, and then die again, until the dead found him and then he would die of that. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t separate his head from his body, and he would revive from that, too.

Daryl lost it. He didn’t even keep enough of his mind to really fight, just enough to throw himself stupidly in the general direction of the mortal who did it.

The whole episode was an embarrassing blur.

Atlanta was a bust, and while he was gone that time the whole damned camp got hit, and the squeamish blonde girl got killed.

Carol was alive. Her girl was alive.

Merle cut his damned hand off and may as well be dead. He would be dead soon enough with no hand.

There was a loop in Daryl’s head.

_Merle cut off his hand._

_Merle was going to die._

Merle was so far gone in his drug-addled haze that instead of waiting for Daryl—who always came, dammit—he cut off his own hand. His life was a never-ending string of ritual fights to the death, and he cut off his dominant hand instead of waiting for Daryl to find him.

No matter what had happened to get him shackled that way, no matter where right and wrong fell in an exchange Daryl hadn’t been around to see, it all boiled down to Merle being too far gone to even remember that he only had to wait for his little brother.

But Ed Peletier was dead.

Carol’s hand didn’t shake when she took the pickaxe from Daryl and caved the asshole’s head in, but she wouldn’t look at him, either.

She got in a car with the jackass who killed Merle—Merle killed himself and picked a damned drawn out way to do it so that was maybe not fair—instead of riding with him. Grimes seemed a good enough man, actually, when you took a step back. Daryl had wanted to kill Merle so many times he thought the Gathering must’ve started. But none of that mattered because Carol and her girl got in a car with him and his family instead of into the truck with Daryl.

Merle was gone. Ed was dead. Carol still didn’t walk over to him.

All in all, Daryl was having a hell of a bad week.

As he pulled away from the remains of the camp — and with it any chance that Merle would find him soon — he tried to focus on the upside. He would never have to listen to Ed Peletier’s voice again. He didn’t realize just how much he wanted to kill the man himself until something else did it for him.

 

 

 

 

 

Between one heartbeat and the next, it seemed, they were underground in a lab.

Daryl had very specific and repetitive nightmares about ending up in an underground lab, and here he was in an underground lab. He had a couple of hours of sheer terror during which he wondered if everything was about to get extremely violent, but as it turned out either Jenner couldn’t detect any difference in their blood samples, or he saw a difference but didn’t pursue anything because it wasn’t the kind of difference he was looking for. Daryl didn’t care either way as long as no one got any ideas about trying to dissect anyone.

His relief was such that he drank enough to drown a fish, then spent longer in the shower than could be considered polite. He didn’t care. They didn’t seem like the kind of people he would ever feel the need to show consideration. Bunch of snobs that killed his brother and liked to look down their noses and make snide comments on the best days. Hell, if somebody said something, he’d just tell them he took an extra ten minutes for every time Grimes pointed his damned gun at him.

He’d stashed his stuff in the room directly across the hall from where Carol had ushered her little girl. It was smaller than some of the others, just a bunk against a wall, a little chest that was more nightstand than dresser, and a straight-backed chair that looked like it belonged to a desk from some other part of the facility. Whoever had lived in this space before had filled one drawer with socks and the other with books. Daryl stayed away from the books. They would tell him too much. He didn’t even want to know as much about the ghost whose space he was invading as he’d learned opening the damn drawer.

The socks fit, though. He stole a couple pairs for his duffel and laid the clothes he’d rinsed out in the shower over the back of the chair to dry. A quick stroll down the hall let him filch three bottles of wine, and he left his door mostly open as he flopped down onto the floor and leaned against the bunk. Just because the room was small, and he didn’t like being shut into small spaces. Not at all because he wanted to stare like a sap at the door to the room Carol was using.

He didn’t get the wine because she liked it, either.

He felt her before he saw her. Only good thing about being locked underground, as near as he could figure, was that he could be absolutely sure that it was just Carol and not someone swinging at sword at him. The jangle of her Presence was quickly followed by the sound of light footsteps, and then she was standing in front of his door with a bottle of wine in each hand.

“Hi,” she said, softly.

He smirked at her. “What, no glasses?”

She shrugged, “I thought maybe you would want to have a drink and catch up? Now that we can?”

“Been waiting on you,” he said, admitting it to himself as he said it to her.

Carol’s lips twitched. “Everyone is drunk and scattered. I’ll just crack our door. And we’ll have to leave yours…”

“Yeah, yeah. Gotta listen for your girl. Come on in here, grab a piece of floor.” He slid over a bit so that she could get the best view of the room in question.

Immortals didn’t get drunk without working at it. It was a delicate thing. First, you had to drink enough to overcome the speed that your body purged the alcohol from your system, and then you had to commit to continuing to drink, rather quickly, until you were ready to sober up. Daryl suspected that Merle wouldn’t have wasted every penny the both of them could make on drugs if he’d been able to maintain a good drunk, but that could just be wishful thinking.

They shared the first bottle in silence, easing back into one another’s company. There was much shifting of positions and looks out of the corners of eyes, but after a while they settled in well enough that her Presence hummed pleasantly against him instead of grating across his nerves.  

He shook his head and set about opening the second bottle, taking a swig and passing it to her in a motion that felt far too familiar to have been absent for decades. “How long are you gonna be mad at me?” he asked.

She blinked at him. Her eyes were puffy and swollen, and she was biting her lip. “I’m not angry.”

“Coulda brung your girl. Rode in the truck with me.”

She looked away from him, shrugging. “This Carol doesn’t know you yet. We need to ease into friends, don’t you think? If we’re going to be around these people for a while?”

He didn’t want to ease into friends. “Don’t wanna.” .

She grinned at him and opened another bottle. “Oh, we are encouraging this. I’ve never seen you drunk before.”

“Don’t. I get mean. Didn’t know I was going that fast. Give me a few minutes.” Her bottom lip was poking out in a way that was so cute he near couldn’t stand it. “That ain’t fair, pointin’ that face at me.”

“Come on. We’re safe. It’ll be fun.”

“You really feel like that? Safe?”

“What do you mean?”

“Keep thinkin’ that doctor is gonna see something. Decide he wants to dissect me.” Oh yeah, he was buzzed. That wasn’t the kind of thing he should be saying out loud. If she were Merle, she’d hit him upside the head and tell him to pull himself together.

But she wasn’t Merle, so she frowned and said, “If I can forget about the fact that we’re underground, then you can forget about the fact that he’s a research scientist. As far as I know, they can’t tell the difference. Unless they actually see the healing, I mean. I don’t know if they could measure that.”

“So, what you’re sayin’ is, so long as nobody says anything about it, and we don’t fall down and break our necks or nothing, we’re fine for a while.”

“Yes. That,” she handed him the bottle and he’d taken another drink before he remembered he decided to slow down and sober up.

“You done that apurpose.”

“Yes, indeed.” She smiled broadly, then took her turn with the wine. “We should have whiskey. This stuff is too sweet.”

Daryl laughed. “I thought French girls liked wine.”

“Not this wine. This is terrible.”

For some reason, that was the funniest thing Daryl had heard in years. “Well, you’ve gotten me drunk, are you going to take advantage?”

“Shhhh! Somebody might hear us.”

“We’re only talking.”

“We’re speaking French.”

“Oh,” he said. He wasn’t sure when he switched languages. It must be something about the way they were sharing wine while sitting in the floor and being afraid he’s going to die, with a child just across the way he’s trying not to wake up. It took him back to the war he’d finally chased from his dreams, mostly. He very deliberately switched to English. “Since when? I kept in practice all I could, but probably still suck at it.”

“Since you discovered grammar. Your French is better than your English in that respect. But you’re fine,” she said. “And honestly, it would be nice, except someone may hear.

“Right. Gotta keep it all under wraps. Very shteal…sht…stealsh…secret.”

If her giggle fit was an indicator, Carol was as drunk as he was.

“Stealthy. See, I can say it, and it’s your language.”

“Missed you, Caro,” Daryl whispered. “Never shoulda left Savannah. Merle done killed himself, anyway. I kept his ass alive for years and he just went and give the hell up.”

“He isn’t dead yet.”

“Cut off his hand.”

“He still has one.”

That was true. If anyone could stay alive with only one hand, it would be Merle. He was too ornery to die, really.

“You’re sure, ain’t’cha?”

“That Merle still has a hand? As certain as we can be.”

“Nah. Not that. You’re sure that we ain’t gotta, y’know, fight. If we don’t want to. Cause I been thinkin’ about it ever since Savannah, and I think maybe me and Merle’s been in, like, an extremist cult or some shit. Like, the Game’s not nature, right? It’s religion instead. And we got taught the fucked up weird sect stuff.”

He couldn’t read any of the expressions that flew across her face in quick succession.

“No, Daryl. We don’t have to fight if we don’t want to. At least, not until the Gathering, if such a thing even exists.”

“So, I didn’t really have to kill all them people?”

“Shh! Don’t say things like that. What if someone heard you talking about — talking like that?”

She was right. He never should have let himself get drunk. “Want I should talk about how your eyes are the color of cornflowers instead? I missed you so damned much.”

Things got a little fuzzy after that.


End file.
